There are numerous types of commercial and industrial, intelligent utility meters, as well as other related monitoring and control devices, that are provided by numerous manufacturers. Each of these devices is generally provided with a communication protocol that is unique to the manufacturer. As such, any system that is implemented to remotely read the utility meters, as well as monitoring and control devices, must be able to accommodate the numerous communication protocols, or alternatively, replace the existing devices with devices having a communication protocol that is compatible with the remote communication and reading system.
Obviously, replacing existing devices with devices having a compatible communication protocol adds an extreme amount of additional cost to any remote meter reading system and, as such, is likely not feasible. As such, some proposals for automatic remote meter reading systems presume a certain communication protocol or suggest the retro-fitting of a utility meter to assume a certain communication protocol, e.g. RF communication. Others, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,239,575, suggest using multiple types of communication links, e.g. wires, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or RF link, to accommodate each communication protocol of each device. Changing the type of link for each communication protocol can make for costly, time-consuming installation and maintenance. Further the data collection system requires a complicated software package for recognizing the various communication signals and converting each of them to a useable format.
Therefore, there is a need for a remote meter reading system that can accommodate a plurality of communication protocols without requiring the replacement of existing equipment and that can simplify the data collection system by requiring it to recognize a single communication protocol.